Courses
Artificial Intelligence in Games
Understand the differences between traditional AI and AI applied to game development, where other factors such as playability are more relevant that the oponent’s intelligence level. Be familiar with the practical problems when developing AI for video games, and with the several techniques applied in comercial video games. Know how to design and build an AI system for a video game independently of its genre (action, sport, strategy, narrative).
Autonomous Agents and Multi-Agent Systems
To acquire general notions about agents and multi-agent systems; knowing how to identify and classify agents and environments, according to different properties. Knowing how to develop complex systems and systems from different application areas, using an agent-oriented methodology. Knowing how to define a society of agents in order to solve a specific problem. Being able to design agents with reactive, deliberative and hybrid architectures. Being able to create societies of agents that communicate, in a practical way, using suitable languages and platforms.
Computer Graphics for Games
This course covers both theory and practice of game engine software development. It delves into the different engine subsystems including, but not limited to, rendering, character animation, and physics, and details the articulation required to support gameplay development. By the end of this course, students should understand how modern game engines work, and be able to design and develop their own game engines.
Game Design
This course grants the students the opportunity to develop their skills on experience design and prototyping for games. The learning process is sustained in the discussion of what is a game, what are its components and what is its relation to the players (having in mind their differences). It is expected that the student develop design documents and prototypes to support his/her work on the course.
Game Development Methodology
Present a vision of the different methodologies and technologies involved in the development of digital games discussing the main features and issues in each one. Grant students with conceptual tools and techniques to develop user interfaces for games with special emphasis on player controls. Develop the ability to reflect and test the player experience and gameplay. Discuss the role of conceptual modelling and user testing. Highlight the importance to take a user centred approach in the exploration of the player experience.
Multimedia Content Production
Know the different types of multimédia information and how to manipulate them to poduce multimedia content. To understand the technological constraints that affect Production. To understand critical factors affect the success of a production, namely in aspects such as capture, encoding, processing and visualization of the different media. To know the different kinds of available authoring tools. To create Multimedia contents; To identify the different contexts in which multimedia can be consumed, with emphasys on online and network issues (evaluate bandwidth, latency, synchronization, etc.) and mobile devices. Introduce some advanged multimedia usages such as procedural modelling, generative art augmented reality. Apply efficient methods of multimedia content retrieval.
Thesis
A Procedurally Generated Approach to Emotional Storytelling for Games and Interactive Systems
One of the least noticeable applications in the area of Procedural Generated Content is in generating narratives. Furthermore, when it tends to be used, it focuses on plot generation. Unfortunately, this results in a disregard for the potential emotional impact that storytelling may bring to table, since that, in many cases, it is the way a narrative is told that results in some sort of emotional resonance for an audience. Through a study of storytelling techniques, together with an analysis of existing narrative-driven PCG systems, and by exploring various manners of emotional evaluation in art, a system was built that takes base narratives as input and, through an emotional model, adds storytelling mechanisms to them, seeking to differentiate and maximize one of two opposite emotional moods: Happy and Dour. These narratives are then played in the Virtual Tutor system. A series of experiments consisting of four different narratives were made to discern if the emotional valence of these was successfully differentiated and maximized.
Enclothed Cognition in Virtual Worlds
Studies have shown that wearing different clothes have different effects on human psychological processes, an effect referred to as enclothed cognition. This work aims at verifying whether this influence is also present in a virtual space where a person is represented by an avatar he/she controls. Using Unreal Engine 4 and Nvidia's APEX clothing, we created three distinct virtual scenarios. In the first one, the player's character is dressed in casual clothes. In the other two, they dress in a lab coat. However, one is implied as belonging to a doctor and the other to a painter. In all scenarios users performed problem solving tasks. 51 participants were distributed and played through the different scenarios and the results suggest that the effects of enclothed cognition are not always observed in virtual environments.